Balloon Glass
by Killing Joke
Summary: "At a certain level," Hannibal says, "the correct keeping of a pet can become an art form equivalent to calligraphy, or cookery."


_"__You have to create a reality where only you and the fish exist. Your lure is the one thing he wants, despite everything he knows."_

The outside of Baltimore's second-best tropical fish and aquaria store is remarkably non-descript. It sits, a dilapidated frontage among dilapidated frontages, just back from the main road: there is a small car park for patrons, although it is likely that most people currently parked here aren't here for the fish.

They're here for the dead.

Up and down Windsor Mill Road the cars pass, back and forth, oblivious. On the opposite side of the road from the Aquar-U-Like, the rows of grave markers sit like lumpen teeth on the sward. This is the grand acreage of, altogether, three cemeteries - the Jewish Beth Tfiloh flanking the Lorraine Park, with the Annunciation Greek Orthodox curled across both. In winter, as it is now, the grass around the gravestones and monuments is flat and almost grey with cold. In contrast, the Astroturf surrounding the wares of the monument store nearby stands out harshly, synthetically, in bright green.

It is both an ugly place and a beautiful one, and people don't linger here for long.

Dr Lecter's Bentley curves smoothly up the Dogwood Road on his way to the store, following the line of the tributary river that is known as the Dead Run. The name would perhaps please him were he not already almost entirely engaged in his perusal of a new recording of Paganini: the _Sonata Napoleo_, with a violinist he has previously been unfamiliar with. Snow flutters across his windscreen as the orchestra picks up the melody behind the song of the string.

It is not a perfect rendition. The soloist is rather too fond of overdoing the vibrato. But it is novel and the recording is good. Hannibal Lecter, resting a hand on the wheel, considers that he can almost hear the acoustics of the chamber in which it was originally played. A large space, roof like a neo-gothic church, with vaulted ceilings across which the music bounds and rebounds, shatters and comes together again in the way that teacups never will.

Pleasant. Jarring. Pleasant because it is jarring.

Almost entirely unlike the hoarding on the aquatics store which sticks out of the Maryland winter landscape like a sore thumb. It is tattered, and dark red, almost the same burnt-blood hue of Dr Lecter's eyes, but the lettering on it ("Best Live Shrimp in Baltimore!" WE - SELL - FILTERS") has faded to an entirely unhealthy orange in the sun of past seasons.

Hannibal Lecter regards the sign out of his window with narrowed gaze, the big dark car sliding past like a crocodile cruising in the waterhole, and then, in a purely instinctive motion, swings across the road and turns into the parking lot.

* * *

"The _betta splendens_," said Hannibal Lecter, raising a hand to his chin. "How much is it?"

The shop was so much more on the inside than its rather shabby exterior had suggested. The sign in itself had been offensive, of course. While Dr Lecter loved to shop, he preferred a different environment. The sanctity and elegance of a good boutique: the sights and scents of great quality and the enduring scent of opulence. Or perhaps the study in contrasts that could be found on tawdry market stalls where the proprietor's deep and abiding love of his craft was the beautiful lure.

Hannibal Lecter liked a superlative product, or a unique experience.

Aquar-U-Like had neither of these things. It was, to be fair to it, far more salubrious inside than out, with the walls of glass tanks scrupulously clean, the hum of electric lamps, heaters and filters a comforting background. The air smelt vaguely of damp and fish meal, kept in bins by the door for the feeding of carnivorous species, with an overtone of chemicals used to clean the tanks and defluoridate the water.

There were towering shelf stacks of packet foods, gravels, bottles of water additives and medications for fin rot, white spot and other unwholesome fish diseases. There was a whole aisle of empty new tanks for sale, each labelled with their particular virtues and liter capacity. Hannibal Lecter examined a perfect little glass cube that was labelled for shrimp, because the minimalist Japanese aesthetic of it caught his attention, then moved on towards the back of the store.

At the back was where the live fish were kept. The atmosphere grew warmer: the light became tinged with the blue of daylight lamps. At the entrance to the corner of live tanks, as a show piece, a long moray eel coiled and recoiled around a tangled piece of driftwood in its tank, the long blunt jaw gulping and clutching, the wolfish eyes intent on nothing.

The tank was far too small for it, Dr Lecter noted, and the eel was going mad. He stared at it for a few seconds, his thin lips quirking softly at its familiar, fevered writhing, then moved further in past a glittering shoal of neon tetras.

There was a large balloon wine glass sat out on a plinth in the middle of the room, full of water and refracting the artificial light in odd ways. Inside the glass, hanging unhealthily in the water with its fins folded uncomfortably close to its body, was a single fish.

Dr Lecter approached it with interest.

It was, of course, a Siamese fighting fish_, betta splendens_, and likely a male because of its state of complete isolation. Hannibal tilted his head down slightly to look for the other tell-tale - the longer, flowing fins - but the fish was sullen and withdrawn and its fins remained tucked close. It hung just under the dusty surface of the water at the top of the glass and did not move, other than the slow undulation of its gills. It was pure white, an unusual colour in the breed, and had pink eyes, indicating albinism.

There was no water filter. There was no water heater. There were a few decaying flakes of food at the bottom of the glass - a good quality glass, Dr Lecter noted, not doing what he would usually and giving the edge a sharp tap to make it ring, in deference to the fish - but nothing else. This fish was dying. It could do nothing else in such conditions. Dying slowly and painfully, suffocated by its own presence and the cloying pressure of the stares of visitors. Compared to the living conditions the rest of the fish in the store enjoyed (with the possible exception of the moray), this fish was in a third world prison.

Something about the way it looked glassily back at Dr Lecter, lost in its own misery, seemed familiar and spurred a spark of desire in him. It was a rarity, a gem hidden in shit, unappreciated for what it was, unrecognised for its special qualities, and caught up in an environment it was entirely unsuited to.

Dying, because of it.

Dr Lecter leaned closer to the glass, knowing now why the pale fish called to him. Different dying eyes in a different pallid face looked back at him from inside the room in his mind where he kept everything he valued about Will Graham.

And the betta fish went crazy at his proximity. It flared all those pure white fins in a frenzy of fury, of fright, of helplessness at its situation, then careened wildly around the glass before floating once more, exhausted, to the skin of the water.

Hannibal Lecter smiled. He turned away from the glass and went to the little counter in the opposite corner of the store, where a big, muscular man wearing a polo shirt that was at least two sizes too small for him was reading a girlie magazine and ignoring everything else.

"The _betta splendens_," said Hannibal Lecter, pretending to ignore the fact that he was being ignored, and passing an apparently casual hand over his chin. "How much is it?"

The man finally looked up, with an expression of such bovine stupidity that Hannibal's jaw tightened minutely.

"The what?"

"The white fish," said Dr Lecter, with deeply embedded serenity. In his mind, knives whirled and blood flowed: externally, his face resembled those ancient graven idols in the depths of the Mesoamerican jungle. "In the wine glass."

The man shook his head. "I can't sell you that one. It's sick. Could die on you and invalidate our _ga-ran-tee_." A meaty hand tried to point Dr Lecter's attention toward a faded sign above the till ("All our fish are guaranteed for 28 days from day of purchase. Money back or exchange"), but Dr Lecter would not be distracted. "We got lots of others. White ones, too, if that's what you're after."

"If it's not for sale," said Hannibal, with the air of one who is being perfectly reasonable, "then why is it out on the shop floor?"

"The boss is treating it. Wanted to keep it somewhere easy to hand. Plus, it's a rare one. He says people like to come and look at it because it's different." The man grinned, and something dark inside Dr Lecter's head shifted pleasantly into place. "Like you did."

"It would stand a greater chance of recovery if you placed it in an environment better suited to it's needs."

"Look, buddy," said the man, standing up at last and leaning forward, "what are you, the local PETA rep? I can't sell you that fish." Some flicker deep in Lecter's eyes seemed to abruptly kick the man's hindbrain into touch. "Sorry," he added. "I don't think I could even if I wanted to. Probably illegal or something. The boss would kill me."

"I could not," said Hannibal Lecter with slow sincerity, "be involved in anything like a felony." His gaze returned to the white fish, hanging in its glass like a discarded water lily flower, slowly wilting and dying. "But I don't believe there's anything illegal in buying myself a new wine glass."

It took a few moments for the man to catch on. Hannibal, with reptilian patience, waited quietly.

"And the fish?" the man asked, once he'd grasped it.

"Died," said Hannibal, smoothly. "No-one will be surprised. You disposed of the body quickly so as not to distress customers. There can be no further questions asked, as there will be no body, and I will pay cash."

He turned just a little, and regarded the ranks of aquaria behind them as the man rang up the total.

"$16.98," he said. "I'll go wrap your glass."

While he waited, Hannibal Lecter hummed a few phrases from the _Sonata, _and slipped one of the aquarium's business cards out of the little plastic holder to read the name listed next to the word "Proprietor". It was easy to memorize it, and the address, the cell number.

On the way home, he called into a fishing supplies store and bought a starter set of bloodworm eggs, just on the point of hatching.

* * *

"Doctor Lecter."

Will Graham's voice, as ever, draws Hannibal to attention. He looks up from the delicate flower pattern he is creating on one of his deep blue-glazed plates.

"I didn't know you liked pets," Will is saying, hands in pockets, trying to look relaxed despite the fact that he reeks of uncertainty. "Had pets, I mean."

The white betta fish glides serenely about in the tall, vase-shaped tank. Its fins are fully extended and so purely pale one can almost see the delicate blood pulsing through the veins. An almost invisible filter hums in the base, and the water maintains at an exact temperature of seventy-eight degrees.

"At a certain level," Hannibal says, "the correct keeping of a pet can become an art form equivalent to calligraphy, or cookery."

Will looks bemused.

"The animal reflects the care the owner shows," Lecter continues. "A poor owner has a poor animal. A good owner has a good animal. And the aesthetic of animals is almost totally dependant upon their correct care, training and environment. Especially with fish."

Will develops an odd expression which quietly amuses Hannibal, as he's almost certain that images of all seven of Will's haphazardly educated and scurfy dogs are passing in front of his mind right now. The empath moves away from the potential implications of his pack's state quickly, and approaches to lean over Hannibal's shoulder.

The thin red slices, so fine that they are almost transparent, are curled into the shape of a water lily. The meat is very dark, very fresh, and obviously only lightly seared. The wine glasses, waiting to be carried to table, are unfeasibly deep balloons, more like brandy glasses.

"We're having sushi? Isn't that kind of insensitive to your new pet?"

"Sashimi," corrects Hannibal, smoothly, "or to be precise, _basashi_. Meat, not fish. And I don't believe fish can be offended."

"You've obviously never met a river trout close up."

Hannibal's curl of smile is all the response required. He moves to transfer the shredded _daikon_ to the dishes and turn the _shiso _out into serving platters. At his shoulder, Will hums quietly, leaning in over the home-made _ponzu_ in the tiny white dipping bowls.

"Well I'm certainly not offended."

"Then you have good taste. If you will excuse me for one moment," Hannibal says, and he crosses to his new tank, where the white fish is happily creating bubble nests around the reeds. Reaching into the drawer below, he extracts the tiny pot of live bloodworms, which he has been to collect from his special breeding ground only this morning. He lifts the tank's lid, drops in a tiny amount of bloodworms, and the fish turns in a swirl of white at the live scent in the water.

As soon as it sees him, it flares up all its fins, charges the glass, the white glory of its tail pulsing almost pearl pink with rage.

"Guess he doesn't like the food very much," says Will, from the kitchen.

"Perhaps it is richer than he is used to," says Hannibal. He turns back to his guest, straightens the set of his suit jacket which has been displaced by his bending. "Or perhaps he's just not used to the scrutiny."

He retreats, goes to carry the balloon glasses to the table, and when he turns back, gestures toward the tank to include Will. "See? Now he is eating."

The flare of unease that he sees in Will's eyes when he watches the man eat the _basashi _practically raw is a joy to behold.


End file.
